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Taiwan trip itinerary

I just went on a 15-day trip to Taiwan. The main purpose of the trip is to attend the Countdown party at Taipei. So during our planning, we must make sure we are in Taipei on 31st Dec. For the places we want to visit, most travellers will usually plan to travel in a loop: Taipei > Miaoli > Taichung > Kaohsiung > Guanziling > Alishan > Sun Moon Lake > Qing Jing > Ao Wan Da > Hualien > Yilan > Taipei.

Hi Wayne! Sure I don’t mind sharing my transportation method with you.
There’s a lot of travelling that day and we try to save time by taking THSR and cab.
We took THSR train from Zuoying to Chiayi (34min; NT410). If you take the TRA train, it’ll take 1h 17min at NT 245.
We then took a cab from Chiayi to Guanziling (about half an hour; around NT600) Alternatively, you can take Chiayi bus to Guanziling (about 1 hour; NT81).
After enjoying the hotspring and lunch, we took the bus from Guanziling to Chiayi.
We then took a bus from Chiayi to Alishan (2.5h; NT221). We aimed for the 12:30 or 14:10 bus.
Yes, I think the last bus for Alishan leaves Chiayi at 14:10. You can click on the link below to take a look at their bus schedule.http://www.cybus.gov.tw/TIMETABLE/Chiayi_NewTimeTable.pdf

Hope that the information is useful to you. Whichever method you choose, it should depend on your timing, amount of baggages and budget. Enjoy your trip! 🙂

Thank you so much for your detailed reply!! I will be leaving for Taiwan on Monday! Anyway, can I trouble you to share the timings as well? – If you can remember? According to my ‘self-planned’ itinerary, I will leave Kaohsiung for GZL at around 8.30am, expecting to reach around 10.30am and soak in the hot spring till 12 or 12.30pm. Then proceed to lunch and exploring GZL area till about 2pm. My initial idea was to get a private cab since we will have to squeeze everything forward if we were to catch the 2.10pm bus from Chiayi. However it will be really expensive because there’s only 2 of us.
Here’s what I hope you can help me with if you don’t mind:
– I’d love to know about your day’s itinerary, specifically the timings.
– How much time should i set aside for the hotspring? (related to 1st point)
– Are there things to explore in GZL? Did you skip it or is there nothing much?
– Did you hire any private cab in Alishan to bring you around? (or towards SML?)
Sorry for asking so much questions!
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hope that I can help you with the timing but I can’t remember the exact timing very well, only what we planned.

– We most likely took the 7:36 THSR train and arrived in Chiayi around 8:07. We then took a cab to Guangziling and most likely reach ard 8:30 to 8:45. We soaked in the hotspring, looked at the souvenir shop and had lunch, and left Guanziling at around 12:30. We reached Chiayi at 13:30 and took the 14:10 bus to Alishan.

– I think 30 min to 45 min would be ideal for the hotspring.

– We skipped the sight-seeing as we felt that the sight as it is a bit far from where we soaked in our hotspring. If you are interested in sight-seeing, you can visit this link: http://wikitravel.org/en/Guanzihling There’s a famous Fire and Water (水火同源), a hotspring that has been on fire for 3 centuries!

– Lastly, there’s bus that goes from Alishan to SML, but there’s only 2 buses each day. The trip is about 2.5h to 3h and costs about NT307. This bus trip is recommended as it drops you off at some sight-seeing spots to take photos. Here’s the link for more information: http://www.ylbus.com.tw/modules/news/article.php?storyid=30